Bill Cotterell: We interrupt this program for a brief apology

As one who has had to apologize, more than once, for saying something stupid, I think we’re in a whole new world of self-destructive gaffes.

There was a time when you had to be somebody important, and speaking from a national pulpit, like Thomas Dewey publicly berating a railroad engineer for causing his campaign train to lurch forward unexpectedly. Vice Presidents Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle had full-time PR flacks quite adept at starting a statement with, “What he really meant by that was ...”

But you don’t have to be a powerful national leader anymore, and you don’t have to screw up in an international spotlight. You can be almost unknown, or famous mainly for being famous, and trip over your own social media.

Recovering from what might normally be a career-killing blunder depends on whether people like you. President Obama, for instance, still has favorable ratings among about 40 percent of people polled in some surveys, and he has three years to recover from what the nonpartisan fact-checking website Politifact selected as its “Lie of the Year” — Obama’s promise that, if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.

Besides, he doesn’t really have to run again. Nowhere to go but up.

Lately, many media critics have been consumed by some remarks made by “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson. If you don’t know what he told CQ (formerly Gentlemen’s Quarterly) about homosexuality and life in the South during the Jim Crow era, just Google his name. Suffice to say, his views are not widely shared, and his way of expressing them was enough to make the A&E television network suspend him from the smash “reality” show.

Robertson was famous, at least among “Duck Dynasty” watchers, but he doesn’t hold any public office or wield any government power. His opinions are unimportant but, when they reflect on A&E or its advertisers, they become news.

Falling from a far less lofty perch, less noisily, was New York public relations woman Justine Sacco, who is apparently very well-known in New York media circles, where people labor under the self-delusion that everyone else cares about them. Before boarding a plane, Sacco tweeted, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white.”

Her dumb remarks were re-tweeted around the globe so fast, a hash tag asking “has justine’s plane landed” sprang up. She instantly drew outraged reaction on Twitter, then Facebook, then the television networks.

IAC, Barry Diller’s Internet company, fired Sacco. She made the obligatory public apology, and social media pretty much went back to obsessing over the duck guy.

The next round of Sacco stories will come when she lands another prominent PR position, soon.

These things get much longer legs in this Internet era. When Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz resigned because his racist remarks embarrassed President Ford at a critical point in the 1976 campaign, the controversy barely lasted long enough for “Saturday Night Live” to use it in a “Weekend Update” joke. Now, you can figure on seeing Robertson on the front of some supermarket celebrity magazines, and Sacco will be good for at least a few blurbs in gossip roundups on the inside pages.

That’s how it went, in media-watcher circles, with Alec Baldwin and Martin Bashir swiftly losing their shows on MSNBC. Bashir made revolting comments on the air — not just an offhand mistake, but a scripted, rehearsed commentary — while Baldwin muttered some homophobic slurs at a sidewalk photographer, apparently unaware (or not caring) that many cameras were recording his rant.

The Robertson thing is different. Tens of thousands of “Duck Dynasty” fans signed online petitions, demanding A&E reinstate him. Cracker Barrel restaurants initially removed “Duck Dynasty” merchandise — then restored it, apologizing to any customers offended by its removal. A lot of his supporters think his First Amendment right of free speech was violated.

It wasn’t. Nobody is putting him in jail or stopping other networks, or publications, from airing anything Robertson wants to say.

Rush Limbaugh offends lots of people a couple times a year; it’s even part of his act, and his job is in no jeopardy. Don Imus was dropped by stations a few years ago for making some hurtful comments, but he’s back.

Robertson will be back, too, after some time in the penalty box and perhaps a PR-crafted nonapology apology. Like Limbaugh's radio programs, “Duck Dynasty” has high ratings. Baldwin's show was just getting started and Bashir drew fewer viewers than a Paula Deen Kwanzaa Special, so they were disposable.

So this will blow over in a while. Some day, if we insist on examining our souls for deep, lasting lessons about it, we’ll have to pause and solemnly ask ourselves, “What was a highbrow magazine like GQ interviewing a “Duck Dynasty” guy for, anyway?”